Black Friday! It’s an unofficial holiday, or at least it was until the COVID lockdowns screwed up everyone’s spending priorities. After spending Thanksgiving with family, eating turkey, and maybe watching a football game or two, people gather outside of their favorite stores and wait for the doors to open. When those doors open, the crowd rushes into the store with the energy of a riot. Getting in the store first presumably means that you’ll be the first to clear all of the marked-down merchandise off of the shelves. It’s your chance to get a good start on shopping for Christmas. If anyone gets in your way, knock them down. If anyone tries to grab what you’re trying to grab, beat them over the head with Junior’s future Christmas gift. Black Friday is a time when you have to be ruthless. Sure, you could just do all of your shopping online, but then you have to hope that your gifts actually arrive on time and without anyone else opening them. My sisters and I used to love Black Friday, though it’s been a while since we’ve participated. To be honest, I imagine it’s one of those traditions that will soon end. New generations will never know the joy of fighting over a silverware set.
That said, as much as customers love Black Friday and as much as business executives enjoy the extra money, I imagine it really has to suck for the poor people who actually work at the stores. I mean, you’re basically giving up your holiday weekend so that you can deal with a bunch of entitled jerks who think that the world is going to end unless they get the perfect gift, and they’re willing to get into a fight and potentially damage merchandise to do it. It has to suck, cleaning and straightening up after a human tornado has torn through your store. That’s why my sisters and I always went out of our way to not make too much of a mess and to pick up after ourselves on Black Friday.
That said, I don’t think that there’s much that we could have done to help out the crew in 2021’s Black Friday. The employees of We Love Toys already know that, as a toy store, they’re going to get hit hard. What they don’t expect is that a virus is going to break out and it’s going to turn the shoppers and anyone bitten by a shopper into the equivalent of a bloodthirsty zombie. The employees soon find themselves trapped in their store, forced to use toys as weaponry. Fortunately, their manager is played by Bruce Campbell, but Bruce isn’t playing Ash Williams here. Instead, he’s just playing a store manager who made the mistake of opening the doors on Black Friday.
Black Friday is occasionally amusing. I liked the fact that it was occasionally difficult to tell the difference between the infected lunatics and the crazed shoppers. I imagine the film itself would be a bit of wish-fulfillment for anyone who has ever worked in a store on Black Friday. It’s not a classic by any means. Some of the characters are a bit underwritten. But it does have Bruce Campbell, and you can’t go wrong there!
Anyway, this Black Friday, remember to be polite to the people who are just trying to collect a paycheck. They deserve to enjoy their holiday too.
